Gambia back in the football family after CAF lifts age-cheat ban
JOHN MENDY / AIPS: The African football confederation has lifted The Gambia’s two-year susension.
This follows the The Gambia Football Federation’s elections, which were held on Saturday and voted in former Gambian sports minister Modou Lamin Kabba Bajo as president.
The executive committee of CAF had agreed “to lift the suspension of The Gambia in the event that elections at the FA were well conducted”.
CAF suspended The Gambia from all it’s competition for two years, for deliberately falsifying players’ ages.
In a letter sent to Bajo, CAF added that the lifting of the ban was “depending on the fact that all matters of age cheating or similar and punishable offences should not occur in the future”.
Saturday’s GFF elections were called following a decision by FIFA’s emergency committee in July, to sack the previous executive administration, led by Mustapha Kebbeh.
A normalisation committee was put in place by FIFA organised the weekend’s elections for a new GFF board, but were not allowed to run in the election.
Kabba Bajo, aged 50, secured 28 votes from the 51 available. His opponent Buba Mbye Bojang got 23 votes.
In other key elected positions, Abdoulie Jallow, Ebou Faye and Martin Gomez were named as GFF vice presidents.
Alhagie Faye, Adama Lowe, Mam Lisa Camara and Sainabou Cham were also elected unopposed as members of the GFF board, and all seven regional football association presidents are part of the executive.
The country’s recent football issues emerged at the start of May, when CAF banned The Gambia from all its competitions – including the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations – after ruling that the GFF had fielded five over-aged players during a game against Liberia in the African U-20 Championship qualifiers.
In addition, CAF ruled that Ali Sowe, born in June 1994, had been found to have registered in 2012 in the Confederation Cup with an identical passport number but a birth date going back to 1988.
As a result, FIFA threw its support behind CAF, supporting the African body’s sanctions.
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